Oxygen is essential to many physiological and metabolic processes, including aerobic metabolism. A lack of oxygen for implanted cells often leads to cell injury or death. Oxygen provision is a vital component in sustaining transplanted cells.
The success of many transplants is compromised not only due to graft-host rejections, but also by ischemic conditions generated by insufficient oxygen supply to the transplant. Following implantation of the cells, oxygen can be provided to the implanted cells from the body tissue (mainly via diffusion). However, the relatively low ambient oxygen tension and the low natural diffusion rate are unable to provide highly metabolic cells with a significant, necessary amount of oxygen amount.
Islet transplantation is a clinical protocol aiming to help diabetes type I (DTI) patients. Transplanted cells, no matter their origin, elicits inflammatory and rejection reactions. To ensure engraftment and long-term survival of transplanted islets, medical approaches to such engraftment should target and address both (1) long-term rejection processes of the host against the graft, and (2) the initial inflammatory reaction of the host against the graft.
In order to achieve stable graft function, donor tissue should be provided with sufficient level of oxygen and should be protected from host immune and inflammatory cells and from their released toxic substances.